For Those Kindred Who Fought For The Republic In The Spanish Civil War-1936-39

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Eddie Clements right up until the day he died in 1997 always said that he left the best part of himself, the part that was generous and not self-serving, in Spain back in his youth, the1930s, specifically 1936 and 1937 when he had served in a POUM (Party Of Marxist Unification in Spanish) battalion on the Lerida front and had fought like seven dervishes to beat back Franco’s forces, and beat them good. For a while.  By the way that POUM military organization (all the political parties had their own military arms, at least at first before the command was centralized under the aegis of the Spanish Communist Party, acting as agents for the Soviet Union who were footing the bill, and the only ones providing military to the Republican forces at the time) was the same one that George Orwell got dragooned into and wrote about in his famous book Homage to Catalonia. And a further by the way, just so you know, Eddie Clements was not his real name, not back then anyway but he had shortened it and Anglicized it when the deal went south on the Republican forces and it was a lot better, a hell of a lot better, for him to seem to be English when he tried to immigrate to the United States in1939.

Eddie, born Edward Klementowski, a Polish national, was on the run in those days from the Pilsudski regime in Poland and found himself in Spain like many others when they saw that the shades were being pulled down over Europe by one madman or another. Of course in Poland Eddie had been a Polish Communist Party member in good standing until about 1936 when he was expelled from the party for some vague Trotskyite heresy and hence when he tumbled into Spain he joined the POUM militia since the Polish unit of the International Brigades was off limits to him, way off limits to hear him tell over beer or seven at Mike Diceks’s Tavern over in “Little Poland,” Andrew Square in Boston.  

That is where Pete Markin who gave me the story had meet him back in the 1970s when somebody that he worked with, also Polish although born in the United States, who knew the newly left-wing politicized Markin was interested in the Spanish Civil War and guys who actually fought there. And so they met, met occasionally, when Markin was in the area and discussed, or maybe that was too polite a word over a few beers (usually on Markin’s tab) the various maneuvers, military and political of that war. And when they finished up any session Eddie would always, always close by saying that he had left the best part of him in Spain back then. It took Markin a long time to understand that, to mull over the politics of it, since he had been way to young, hadn’t even been born yet, when some hearty men not afraid to fight, and to die became the “premature anti-fascists” in that struggle. He, himself, a military veteran, Vietnam, although kicking and screaming about it, and thus no stranger to war, and rumors of war, could not understand what it was like when men went way out of their various ways to fight in Spain. He was glad that they did, glad that Eddie did so but still he was perplexed by that commitment.        

Moreover he and Eddie would have some friendly battle royales (usually after a few too many of Mike’s Polish imported beers) about the “correct” strategy that should have been applied in the Spanish situation. Eddie adamantly stood on the grounds that after the suppression of Franco’s forces by the Republican forces in the summer of 1936 the Commune should have been declared like in Russia in 1917. The Republican forces had the capacity, at least in the areas they controlled, especially in Catalonia, to do so but were, according to Eddie, hamstrung by the policy of the Communist Party (and behind that organization, the Soviet Union) that it was necessary to win the war against Franco first and then the Commune could be proclaimed and some socialist organization of society attempted. Pete felt just the opposite, felt under the influence of the communists that he associated with at the time that, given the isolation of the Spanish Republican forces, the attitude of the British and French governments to try to maintain the status quo in Europe in the face of the menace of Hitler and his associates that military victory was the first consideration. Eddie would bring up the May Day events in Barcelona to buttress his case but Pete would counter that, given the precarious military situation those Barcelona actions were counter-productive (actually  he used the stronger words counter-revolutionary in those days). And so they would go back and forth, fighting the old political battles like it was just that minute that such questions had be decided for good. And then Eddie would pull out one his stories, his stories of the personal acts of bravery and bravado in the battles that he had witnessed, had a part in, and the fury of the polemics would wilt before those acts of bravery and devotion. That was reality of Eddie’s Spain, and such material Peter enhanced long time love affair with the kindred of that fight.                   

Eddie would tell one story in  particular about when his unit was pinned down in some desolate out rock and it looked like curtains for them because the Franco forces had them surrounded on three sides and the other exit was over some tough and exposed rocky terrain. Now his unit was strictly an international unit because at that time the POUM was putting together such units as morale boosters and as signs of internationalism. One guy, an Irishman, Duffy, who had fought the bloody British in early 1920s when the heat for an independent t nation in Ireland was on, had been a sapper and so he, out of seemingly nowhere had put together a charge to try to block the Francoists from over-running  their position. He and Duffy stayed behind in order to set the charge behind as the others cleared out. Then Duffy told Eddie to get the hell out of there. Duffy stayed and blew the charge blocking the Francoists. At the cost of his own blessed live. Yes, it was stuff like that drove Eddie’s memory bank.         

Eddie was reticent to discuss his life after Spain, how he got to America, and the like but later on a few years before he died he told Markin that he had spent too much time drinking and alley-catting while in America and that he just kind of had a tough time adjusting after the various brushes with death that he undertook gladly back then. And that is when Pete finally realized what Spain had meant to Eddie, and maybe that story about Duffy just kind of put paid to the whole experience. Funny though after Eddie died Pete started thinking about all the times that they had argued and Pete started to see that maybe Eddie had a point about the right strategy in Spain. All he knew was that he had lost his last living connection with Spain and he cursed each time he thought that he had not even been born then to leave the best part of himself there like Eddie.